Those of us who lived through apartheid and the 1990s will remember the harrowing but necessary Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) process, instituted in 1995. The commission’s public hearings took place from April 1996 until 1998 and gripped the nation’s attention.
Dullah Omar, South Africa’s first democratic minister of justice and a man of unimpeachable integrity, said the process of a commission “is a necessary exercise to enable South Africans to come to terms with their past on a morally accepted basis and to advance the cause of reconciliation”.
It is this process that gave rise to the reopening of the inquest into the murders of Matthew Goniwe, Fort Calata, Sparrow Mkhonto and Sicelo Mhlauli, known as the Cradock Four. For those unfamiliar with the details of their deaths, in short, the Foundation for Human Rights explains that “on 27 June 1985, on their way back to Cradock from Port Elizabeth, the four were arrested at a roadblock set by the Security Branch, assaulted and murdered.
“In 1987, a first inquest concluded that the Cradock Four had been killed by ‘unknown persons’. Therefore, no one was prosecuted for assault or murder. A second inquest in 1993 found that the Cradock Four’s deaths had been caused by the police. However, no individuals were named responsible. Again, no one was prosecuted.”
Then, in 1999, six former police officers involved in the Cradock Four’s arrest and murder appeared before the Amnesty Committee of the TRC, but none of them was granted amnesty. When the reopening of a third inquest was announced in January 2024, the last surviving implicated perpetrator had died.
The third inquest’s hearings were delayed until this year. Testimonies from the victims’ families and their witnesses, as well as from former apartheid state officials, took place between 13 and 24 October.
I was struck by the appearance of former apartheid-era policeman Craig Williamson at the inquest. He took the stand to deny any involvement in the planning and execution of Goniwe. But at the TRC in 1988, he confessed to his direct involvement in the killing of Ruth First, Jeanette Schoon and her six-year-old daughter, Katryn. He said that not regarding them as human beings helped him to carry out these atrocities.
While the country and individuals continue to reel from the actions of people such as Williamson, who ripped whole families apart, leaving gaping emotional and psychological wounds to this day, others tell those of us with such wounds to “move on” and focus only on what is happening now.
However, any scholar of humanity will tell you that events are interconnected. Each one informs the next, and an incomplete examination of the past is likely to result in an unsustainable future, which is where we find ourselves.
The TRC process, though incomplete, was correct in its approach of seeking reconciliation. But complacency has set in. Of concern is that the Cradock Four inquest is not making it into nationwide discussions as a marker of how we find ourselves where we are as a society, and the work required of us in visiting the inquest’s contents. We should be asking what this moment requires of us. DM
This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.
